What is an Israeli identity? or who is a Jew? These questions are related to the crucial question of whether Israel is a Jewish democratic state or a civic democracy for all its citizens? An analysis of the concepts ‘sympathy’ vs. ’empathy’ may resolve the confusion around the conception of identity vs. identification. The concepts of assimilation and integration as related to sympathy should be presented along with the concept of hybridization as related to empathy, in order to illustrate the entire range of attitudes towards the ‘other’ in Israel. On the grounds of the dilemma: How should it be possible for an empathic communication to leap beyond the boundaries of distinguished discourses? Judaism and Zionism will be questioned in a confrontation with the Levinasian ethical idea of ‘otherness’ as linked to responsibility, reciprocity, and diversity.
An examination of the distinctions between the concepts of ‘sympathy’ vs.’empathy’ may contribute to the exploration of the entire range of attitudes towards the ‘other’. Dialogical styles among rival discourses are affected by the prospects of empathic communicative conduct. I would like to relate the dyad empathy/sympathy to the concepts of Identity/Identification, in the context of the possible creation of hybrid identity. If ‘Identification’ means to be constituted through community, state, ethnicity, or gender, then ‘Identity’ should be understood as what is blocked and negated. The expression ‘Israeli identity’ can be understood as a call for identification. A call which strives to fixate Jewish citizens into discourses which ignore the logic of difference.
Since Judaism is defined as a religion and a nation at the same time, Israel portrays a unique case, in terms of the meanings of citizenship, nationality, religious belonging, or ‘home’, ‘exile’ and ‘Diaspora’. The fact that Israel had been established as a Jewish state, denotes the way in which the meanings of ‘resident’, ‘migrant’, ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner’ are interpreted and signified. If we try to deal with the question: ‘what is Israeli identity’? we find ourselves involved with two other disturbing questions: what is the judicial statutes of immigrants in the state of Israel? and ‘what is considered Jewish in the context of the ‘law of return’?
The fact that Judaism signifies a national group and a religion at the same time, is the foundation for an intense need to maintain the spirit of Judaism, based upon common destiny and a deep belief in God’s promise to his chosen people. This spirit is revealed in the verse “For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Bamidbar). In light of this verse, we can detect an aversion to intermingling with ‘others, and a strong repulsion to missionarism, manifested by the creation of obstacles discouraging conversion to Judaism.
This deep seated spirit ends with a lack of empathy for what is non-Jewish. The state of Israel portrays a new society which proclaims brotherhood within the so called ‘melting pot’ designed for those who are defined as Jewish. Other minorities who are called ‘cousins’ at best, or strangers at worst do not count.
In the case of Israel, the meaning of identity is confused with identification. The question is whether identity should refer to the concept of citizenship, or to religious belonging. This intricate situation brings about the unbearable permanent preoccupation with the question: Who is a Jew? If citizenship is conditioned upon a sense of religious belonging, then the legitimacy of conversion becomes an acute problem. In the light of another verse: “converts are as difficult for Israel as psoriasis”, all political crises around the procedures of conversion to Jewishness become clear. Whenever personal identity is confused with identification, we can trace a sharp inclination towards modes of assimilation and integration. Both modes are related to sympathy.
In his book ‘The Order of Things’ Foucault illustrates sympathy as “an instance of the Same so strong and so insistent that it will not rest content to be merely one of the forms of likeness: it has the dangerous power of assimilating, of rendering things identical to one another, of mingling them, of causing their individuality to disappear” (Foucault, 1973:23). The principle of sympathy transforms and alters things in the direction of identity, “so that if its power were not counter-balanced it would reduce the entire world to a homogeneous mass, to the featureless form of the same” (Foucault:24). This tendency is opposed by the compensating force of antipathy which “maintains the isolation of things and prevents their assimilation [by keeping every being within its] impenetrable difference and its propensity to continue being what it is” (Foucault, 24).
By the constant counterbalancing of sympathy and antipathy, identities “can resemble others and be drawn to them, though without being swallowed up or losing singularity” (Foucault, 24). To the concepts of assimilation and integration as related to sympathy, I would like to juxtapose the concept of hybridization as adjacent to the notion of empathy. The word ‘Empathy’ links ’em’, as putting into, to pathos. To empathize according to the Webster’s Dictionary means to recognize diversity as the “the action of understanding, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another or either the past or present, without having the feelings, thoughts and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner”.
On the contrary, ‘sympathy’ means: to experience ‘sym’ similarity, “having common feelings, emotions or experience….. unification and harmony that metaphorically means the capability of communication in the same medium” (Webster’s Dictionary), linked to pathos. Sympathy is an expression of unification and harmony and the capability to communicate in complete agreement.
While sympathy strives to assimilate the other, empathy stresses difference, and awareness of ‘The Differend’ as an unsignified communication. Lyotard stamped the title ‘The Differend’ as “the case of conflict between (at least) two parties that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments [discourses]”. The concept of ‘the Differend’ aims to illustrate precisely the logic of dominance of the hegemonic which ignores the ‘lack of the other’. The ‘Differend’ stresses the idea of language as a limitation of reality. While the Differend signals silence, a litigation is the possibility to settle an argument by using phrases from a common rule. When conflicts are signaled as litigations, differences are ignored and transgressed.
In order to illustrate how the majority of the Jewish population in Israel became involved in paranoic master-slave relationships, we shall discover that it is linked to the impossibility for a realization of an emphatic course of action in the interrelations among people in the state of Israel.
I shall refer the lack of empathy, characteristic to Judaism, to the way the divine contract with God is grasped as a promise to the children of Israel “you shall be my own treasure from among all people… and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” ((Shemot chap 19 sec 6). The status of the Jews as committed to a contractual bondage creates the existential Jewish desire to be hated and rejected as a cause and effect of being ‘God’s treasure’. This inspiration became the reason for maintaining Jewish community life throughout history. The rewarded contractuality constructed the most complicated matter where the demand for equality has been confused with the standpoint of the self persuasion of being chosen.
I would like to share the psychoanalytic language in order to apply the concept of narcissism as an answer to a deep sense of loss endured in being Jewish. Narcissism in terms of mirroring is defined by (Lasch, 1984: 33) as: “a disposition to see the world as a mirror, more particularly as a projection of one’s own fears and desires”.
Human beings are surrounded with phantasies, that are rooted in loss and desire. Being Jewish means to experience a desire to be validated by the other as chosen, and at the same time to proclaim the demand for equality. This aspiration, which remains as a perpetually unfulfilled desire, becomes the main barrier to empathic conduct. The way in which it was maintained in the Diaspora is obvious, but since Zionism took over, the lack of empathy became even more severe…
The experience of loss and unfulfilled desire can produce two opposite movements: creativity on the one hand, and a regressive turn on the other.
But, since the ability to attain a driving force for creativity and a new shift of identity represents a threat to the amalgamation of a collectivity, we can grasp why the regressive turn takes over in Israel. Singularity, as the enemy of homogeneity, comprises a surplus value in the creation of a hybrid identity. Following Hegel’s philosophical thought, identification is coupled in dialectic relations with multiple negations, which embody the possibility to extend a new shift of identity. However, when a denial of difference occurs and brings about regressivity, the possibility of an identity shift is shut off.
Since cultural aspirations originate with an experience of loss, the regressive turn is manifested by the production of historical myths stressing the lost golden age. Fabricated legends related to a primary fall from grace find their way into many societies; many ethnic groups share the myth of being chosen. A nostalgic clinging to the past, searching for ‘roots’, keeps groups in a monolithic structure of similarity. On the contrary, creativity is a process of re-imagining the future. The permanent drive to fill in the gap of loss may bring about creativity only in the case of juxtaposing a new collage of hybrid identities.
In Israel, the yearning for reunification with lost objects is disclosed through the wish to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, including a ‘recovery’ of biblical worship. The regressive turn is entangled with heaps of all-inclusive bans and prohibitions to keep ‘the chosen people’ appropriate and pure. It is manifested by a tendency to protect the Children of Israel from being ‘contaminated’ (hybridized) by what is non-Jewish. The logic of equivalence, which fits the terminology of similarity, sympathy, assimilation, and integration, is signified as homogeneity and purity — purity as opposed to contamination and hybridization.
The urge for purity is a direct expression of regressive narcissism. “‘Purity’ is what ideologies seek; the preservation of their own image, at all costs. Purity is therefore a direct expression of regressive narcissism.” (Frosh: 90).
The concept of purity is one of the most obscure issues that emerge from readings of the Old Testament. In Vayiqra (chapter 19, section 19) we find: “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and wool come upon thee.” What originated as a command intended for a rural society turned into a general taboo on hybridization in Jewish tradition. It became a ban on all acts that increase disorder, carry contamination, or lead to a decrease in purity. (The panic of disorder and the growth of entropy can be interpreted as a latent primordial fear of chaos and death.)
As opposed to regression, creativity points to the ‘gaps’ of the inexpressible — darkened zones related to the banned, repressed, censored, or forgotten. To discuss the possibility of a creative comprehension of reality, we turn to Lacan’s terminology of the three levels of human existence: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.
When Lacan asserts that the ‘Real is impossible,’ he means that the ‘Real’ is richer than any finite number of generalizations of particular realities. The Real, which resists symbolization, creates an abyss between groups constructed by distinct symbolic discourses. It is the Symbolic which, by its nature, imposes blind spots precisely around the focal points of a collective group’s repressed desires.
Each fragment of experience rejected in the linguistic process (under cultural-social supervision) remains unknown. The unknown or inexpressible draws the contours of the group profile. Since language defines what the subject can know about the world and themselves, it also shapes history and the fabrication of inner experiences. Written materials such as historical textbooks and government propaganda publications act as a collective membrane for meanings in use. Therefore, if identity is located in the ‘Real’—which can never be fully covered by meaning—then personal identity is doomed to be silenced.
Paradoxically, the more the symbolic order works as a constructive negation, the greater the striving for creativity. It may end with the creation of a hybrid mutation, plunging into the abyss of the inexpressible — the kingdom of empathic acts. The absence of words drives the production of new meanings through shifts from existing repertoires. Israel reflects a regressive tendency to ‘signalize’ past events into a single accepted interpretation. Group identification becomes conditioned upon the elevation of one group’s past over another’s. In Israeli Jewish society, rejecting the national ethos provokes the fiercest clashes — even before considering the conflict with the Arab-Palestinian society, which is internally divided as well.
The splitting of identification occurs when national memories cease to be shared concerns. For example, Holocaust memorial events — once unifying — are now rejected by some Ethiopian newcomers and Jews of Asian or North African origin. If ‘identity’ is what is blocked and negated, empathy can be activated only in the scar between symbolic identification and the muteness of identity. Yet this raises a dilemma: How can empathy be actualized if deliberate expression is possible only at the cost of impoverishing the self? How can empathic communication leap beyond the boundaries of language?
By praising unification and blurring personal dilemmas, Israeli Jews are torn between being Jewish or being Israeli. The conflict centers on whether Israel is a Jewish state or a state guaranteeing full rights to Jewish people. Democracy’s essential principle—majority rule—defines the group it governs. In Israel, identification is confused between a commitment to the state (as a democratic territory) and a commitment to a national, religious, or ethnic group. The latter excludes non-Jewish citizens as inherently lower in status.
The Israeli Jew is torn between the Zionist revolutionary promise of a new Jewish identity and nostalgic attachment to the pre-revolutionary stage. The verse “one nation and one heart” signifies the hegemonic power of Jewish brotherhood, negating new identities and canceling otherness. The logic of equivalence prevalent in Jewish society weakens the possibility of empathic communication.
Rhetoric of common destiny and persecution reinforces this regressive inclination, keeping the Holocaust central in education, politics, and academia. Questioning Judaism and Zionism must be confronted through Levinas’s ethics of otherness — responsibility, reciprocity, and diversity. However, assimilationist communication styles hinder true dialogue with the “other.” Embracing other narratives requires plunging into the abyss between symbolic orders and negotiating meaning through empathy — a process essential for authentic linguistic and social creativity.
Zionism encompasses ideological nuances ranging across two poles: one defines Israeli identity on civic, territorial grounds; the other views Israel as a shelter for all Jews worldwide. The first promotes a new Israeli civic identity liberated from Diaspora ties, while the second insists that “all Jews are responsible for one another.” The latter aligns with assimilation and integration modes of identity, promoting similarity and suppressing diversity.
All modes of Zionism demarcate two types of Israeli identities: Arab identity (excluded by hostility) and Israeli identity (still vague). The radical pole, beyond traditional Zionism, seeks a hybrid identity inclusive of all Israeli groups — Jewish and Arab alike — emphasizing citizenship over ethnicity. This redefinition of Jewish identity enables creative hybridization grounded in empathic communication.
In conclusion, Judaism maintains boundaries while blurring internal diversity. Identity concerns language, meaning, and empathy more than political or cultural parameters. The current conflict between those maintaining identification forms and those embracing hybridity shapes Israel’s democratic identity. The balance of power between these trends will determine the future of Israeli democracy.
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